Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Lamont, CA

Lamont is an unincorporated census-designated place in Kern County, California, located about 9 miles south-southeast of downtown Bakersfield at an elevation of just 404 feet.

Lamont was founded in 1923, although its first post office did not open until 1947.

The 2020 census counted 14,049 people in Lamont, down from 15,120 in 2010, living in 3,519 households with an unusually large average household size of 3.99 people.

About 96% of Lamont's residents are Hispanic or Latino (2020 census), more than 80% speak Spanish at home, and an estimated 41.7% of residents were born outside the United States.

Lamont is a strikingly young community — the median age at the 2020 census was just 28.1 years, and over half of its households had children under 18 living in them.

Lamont grew out of the Dust Bowl migration, as large numbers of farm workers arrived from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and other Plains states during the 1930s through the 1950s seeking relief from the Great Depression.

Just south of Lamont stands the historic Weedpatch Camp, officially the Arvin Federal Government Camp, built in 1936 by the Farm Security Administration — the real-life camp that inspired the government camp in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.

Three original 1930s buildings still stand at Weedpatch Camp — the community building, the library, and the post office — the only original Dust Bowl-era camp buildings left in any camp in California, and the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

The Weedpatch Camp still operates today as the Sunset Camp, providing seasonal housing for migrant farm workers, just as it did in the 1930s.

Lamont remains a farmworker town: its median household income was about $34,436 in 2023, and renters occupy roughly 58% of its homes.